I'm going to build my own fucking med school

having a deep conversation 
about bison hats with my nephew

Last night my friend who was entertaining a five year old mentioned to me that he just doesn't get kids, they make no sense. That's what I love about kids. They haven't been trained by the hidden curriculum of the world, so they still don't give a shit what the world thinks. Kids are the masters of keeping it real.

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"I'm going to build my own fucking hospital. And there'll be none of that there, thank you."

       - Paul Farmer

One of my favorite parts of undergrad was analyzing med schools.  Which med schools would be the best for me, what part of the country I wanted to live in, what sort of people I would meet, and so on.

Now that I'm in med school, one of my favorite past times is analyzing residency programs. Some of my classmates came in with a set vision for family practice or ortho.  sidenote - those two specialties seem to have the most people who are confident about their choice. Anyways, I'm not like that. I could see myself as a full-time basic scientist running the Whitehead, a peds heart surgeon, a psychiatrist, Dean of Medicine, the list goes on.

The common thread that I've noticed among my ideas is that I have two pools, and I jump back and forth depending on my state of mind: cynical vs idealistic. My wife once called me naively idealistic, yet my anatomy lab partner once called me the most cynical med student he'd ever met, so I guess I'm wired with a little bipolar disorder. 

On my idealistic days, I remember my days back at Kenyon College, when I wanted to change the world. [previous post: why Kenyon College kicks ass] I read Paul Farmer's Mountains Beyond Mountains, and I wanted to save people in rural Haiti from losing family members to treatable diseases. 

sidenote - the magic of Paul Farmer is not his work ethic, what makes him unique is that he maintained a child-like green-ness into his 30's and 40's. He ignored the lures of private practice, fast cars, and cynicism towards his patients. Instead he kept firm to his ideals and changed the world.

On other days, more cynical ones, I see the incredible work our administration has been putting in to renew our status as a licensed medical school and I sigh at the loops they have to jump through. 

As I've gone through med school, I see students in both the idealistic and cynical pools. Some of my classmates are in the House of God camp: bitter with the world, just want their degree, and get on with their life. Others of my classmates still naively hold on to their dreams of changing the world. The little that remains of my non-crushed soul goes out to those students. The hidden curriculum of med school is coming after them. If I ever build my own fucking med school, one question I want to answer is how to help students who are green stay green. I want to know how to cultivate more students who still have the energy to buck the culture and do what they're passionate about. 

See you on the other side,

from ken

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